Physics Related News: Israel Joining CERN, Pugwash and Global Zero, The Replication Crisis, and MAX the Damon.

(Click to enlarge.)

Plan for this post:

1. Prologue: “Can we sleep soundly at night?” Meeting Ephraim Halevi (former head of the Israeli Mossad) in 2007.
2. Israel and CERN, an evening in honor of Eliezer Rabinovici: The story of how Israel joined CERN is an intriguing  story that involves science, academic politics, real politics, money, and diplomacy of various kinds.  The evening was quite fascinating with interesting lectures by physicists and diplomats. (Click for the video;  some of it was over my head.)
3. Ephraim Halevi’s lecture on Israel, CERN, and more. Test your knowledge: did you ever hear about the organizations Pugwash and Global Zero?  And do you know who Joseph Rotblat and Frank von Hippel are?
4. Reproducibility Crisis zoom conference organized by Sergey Frolov
5. Giving quantum talks at the German Israeli quantum academy, and at physics colloquia at PI and Rutgers
6. Max the Demon a physics comics by Assa Auerbach and Richard Codor
7. Epilogue: “Can we sleep soundly at night?” Ephraim Halevi’s 2023 answer.

Two speakers at the evening celebrating Israel’s admission to CERN: Halina Abramowicz and Shikma Bressler

This post is about things around physics where the main topic is an evening at the Israeli Academy of Science honoring my friend Eliezer Rabinovici who is now the president of CERN.

Prologue: Meeting Ephraim Halevi, the former head of the Mossad in 2007

In 2007 we had a special semester at the (Israeli) Institute for Advanced Studies, and one evening the director, Eliezer Rabinovici, hosted the director of the sister IAS at Princeton, Peter Goddard (whose nickname, as we were told, was “God” ) to a party. I was hanging with Imre Barany and a few minutes after we were introduced to Goddard, we saw him again in the crowd:

“How do you enjoy your stay in Israel” I asked Goddard

“I like it” was the answer “but I am an Israeli!”

Looking more carefully at the man we were talking to, I realized my mistake.

“Imre,” I said with enthusiasm “please meet the former head of the Mossad (“Mossad” is the national intelligence agency of Israel) and the current VP of the Hebrew University: Ephraim Halevi! And this is Professor Imre Barany from the Hungarian Academy of Science!” (“actually the question ‘how do you enjoy your stay in Israel` is quite appropriate for a Mossad guy as well,” I thought.)

Imre and I were both very excited,  engaged in a small humorous chat with Halevi.

At the end I asked

“So, can we sleep soundly at night?”

“Yes you can,” Halevi answered, “There are people who make sure of it.”

A few weeks ago I met Halevi at the “Israel joining CERN” evening. He gave an interesting lecture that I will mention shortly and I asked him again if we can sleep soundly at night. You can find his answer at the end of this post.

Ephraim Halevi, Petter Goddard, and Imre Barany

Israel entering CERN

The purpose of the evening at the Israeli Academy of Science and Humanities was to honor Eliezer Rabinovici, an old friend of mine who was replaced by Mark Karliner as the representative of Israel in CERN. Rabinovici is still connected to CERN as the president of CERN. The lectures were interesting, although some of them required knowledge of the Israeli physics community or of physics that I don’t have.

Five more speakers at  the evening celebrating Israel and CERN: Eliezer Rabinovici, Peter Jenni, Rafi Barak, Giora Mikenberg, and Mark Karliner

Halevi’s lecture

Ephraim Halevi served in the Israeli Mossad for many years and was the head of the organization between 1998 and 2002. The lecture’s title was “Track two and track three in the toolbox over the years.” I still don’t understand what “track two” and track three” refer to :).  Halevi talked a little about the diplomacy (and his own part) behind Israel joining CERN, and about SESAME, but large parts of Halevi’s lecture were about one of his main activities since he retired from civil service: acting against nuclear weapon proliferation. Halevi mentioned two notable (and noble!) organizations against proliferation: Pugwash (founded in 1957 by Joseph Rotblat) and Global Zero (founded in 2008) and he talked about the very interesting history of these organizations. As it turned out, these types of organizations served as platforms for building informal relations between Israel and other countries (like the Soviet Union). Halevi told  two little stories, one from a 2014 Global Zero meeting where he and Uzi Eilam were the Israeli delegates and they had to deal with a detailed program of Frank von Hippel regarding middle-east disarmament. (The picture above are portrays of these three personalities.) To make an exciting short story even shorter, at the end, the program was not adopted. The second story was about a Pugwash meeting in 2015 where Halevi indirectly posed a question to the Iranian Foreign minister. Ephraim Halevi also briefly mentioned the recent war in Ukraine and his hopes that nuclear weapons will not be applied there, and the question regarding the location of next-generation accelerators and his hopes regarding where it will be built. I found Halevi’s (Hebrew) lecture quite exciting and it is very much recommended. I also greatly enjoyed the lecture of another diplomat, Rafi Barak who was the general manager of our Foreign Office.

Eliezer’s and Shikma’s Lectures

Eliezer’s lecture (also in Hebrew) told the story of Israel and CERN from his own angle.

Two critical moments (click to enlarge): Israel’s request to join CERN (above); The decision to admit Israel (below); A crucial parameter (in my view): we see in the bottom right picture two women out of ten participants which is rather poor representation of women. (But sadly not surprising for physics/math.)  

Shikma Bressler gave a very interesting lecture (click to enlarge the picture) on the role of Israeli scientists for ATLAS detectors.

The replication crisis

Sergey Frolov and Vincent Mourik

A few weeks ago I participated in a short zoom workshop organized by Sergey Frolov about the reproduction crisis, and more precisely about the question “Does condensed matter physics need to worry about a replication crisis?”

I think that a central problem is: “What are the appropriate methodology and ethics for scrutinizing major scientific works,” and this problem is relevant to some of my own scientific endeavors over the years.  Sergey Frolov and Vincent Mourik themselves put under the microscope several works regarding “Majorana zero modes”, which are important steps toward topological quantum computers.

One issue that speakers elaborated on in the seminar was on getting data from authors, which is something I encountered on several occasions (and overall, had positive experiences).  In the last three years, with Yosi Rinot and Tomer Shoham, we have been putting Google’s 2019 “quantum supremacy” paper under the microscope, and naturally, needed some data.  Our policy regarding data was: (a) We always “asked” and never “demanded” data; (b) In cases where the answer was negative we did not ask again; (c) Sometimes, when the answer was positive we did send reminders (trying not to be “pushy”) and so we did when we got no answer at all (which is ok).

German-Israeli quantum academy and other quantum events.

A few weeks ago I gave a talk at an Israeli-German “Quantum Future academy Workshop” for young students. My lecture was about “Limits of Computations, Noise and Quantum Computers”. At the end, I talked mainly about how quantum computing is related to computational complexity and how quantum computers may give computational advantage and left only little time to discuss my own take on why a noisy quantum computer may not give computational advantage after all.

Alef’s humorous futuristic view of me asking GPT7 whether quantum computers will ever achieve advantage.

I gave two (zoom) physics colloquium talks at Rutgers University and at the Perimeter Institute about my argument against quantum computers, and I felt that both talks went very well with very nice discussions afterwards. Thanks to my hosts Daniel Friedan at Rutgers and Latham Boyle at PI.

The PI talk was in direct competition with the World Cup France vs. Morocco football match, and it was recorded (Video is here). It was very nice to meet face-to-face (in the zoom sense) Lee Smolin, Debbie Leung, Ray Lafflamme, and others.

(Slides: Israeli-German academy; Rutgers; PI.)

Max the Demon!

Max the Demon is a wonderful comics book about thermodynamics written by Assa Auerbach (a famous physicist) and Richard Codor (a famous artist, among the writers of the legendary book Zoo Aretz Zoo)

Epilogue: can we have a sound night sleep now?

After the “Israel joining CERN event”, I had a little chat with Halevi. I told him about his answer to my 2007 question and asked him if these days we can also sleep soundly at night. Ephraim Halevi’s response was:

“I haven’t been sleeping soundly in recent weeks and I estimate that my sleep hours will be even shorter in the coming weeks. The days are gradually getting gloomier and the gates of reconciliation are closing.”

(This was in February, and I suppose that Halevi referred to the dispute regarding the judicial reforms in Israel. Indeed in later interviews he expressed his objection to these reforms.)